itself, and upon the other hand, to
become familiar with a certain number of laws and general relationships.
Geography, as often taught, illustrates the former; mathematics, beyond
the rudiments of figuring, the latter. For all practical purposes, they
represent two independent worlds.

Another antithesis is suggested by the two senses of the word
"learning." On the one hand, learning is the sum total of what is
known, as that is handed down by books and learned men. It is something
external, an accumulation of cognitions as one might store material
commodities in a warehouse. Truth exists ready-made somewhere. Study is
then the process by which an individual draws on what is in storage. On
the other hand, learning means something which the individual does when
he studies. It is an active, personally conducted affair. The dualism
here is between knowledge as something external, or, as it is often
called, objective, and knowing as something purely internal, subjective,
psychical. There is, on one side, a body of truth, ready-made, and, on
the other, a ready-made mind equipped with a faculty of knowing--if it
only wills to exercise it, which it is often strangely loath to do. The
separation, often touched upon, between subject matter and method is the
educational equivalent of this dualism. Socially the distinction has
to do with the part of life which is dependent upon authority and
that where individuals are free to advance. Another dualism is that of
activity and passivity in knowing. Purely empirical and physical things
are often supposed to be known by receiving impressions. Physical
things somehow stamp themselves upon the mind or convey themselves
into consciousness by means of the sense organs. Rational knowledge and
knowledge of spiritual things is supposed, on the contrary, to spring
from activity initiated within the mind, an activity carried on better
if it is kept remote from all sullying touch of the senses and external
objects. The distinction between sense training and object lessons
and laboratory exercises, and pure ideas contained in books, and
appropriated--so it is thought--by some miraculous output of mental
energy, is a fair expression in education of this distinction. Socially,
it reflects a division between those who are controlled by direct
concern with things and those who are free to cultivate themselves.

Another current opposition is that said to exist between the intellect
and the emotions